


Twilight Flowers

by VelvetEternity (orphan_account)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Body Modification, Dark Magic, False Identity, Horcruxes, M/M, Marauders' Era, Name Changes, Necromancy, Secret Identity, Soul Bond, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-05 16:17:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15867225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/VelvetEternity
Summary: With Voldemort dead and the muggles aware of magic, the world falls into war, chaos, and ruin. To survive, the only option, the only path, is to go back.





	Twilight Flowers

**Title: Twilight Flowers**

**Author: VelvetEternity**

**Chapter One: The Future Is Dead**

* * *

He does not really expect it to work. Harry is not a spell master, he isn't a potion master, and all of his rune magic comes from the three months of Hermione's teaching before her death. With the world as it is, the plague wiping magic away like dust, and the horrors of war killing everyone muggle and magic alike, going back is the only real solution. Harry has a single destroyed time turner, the three deathly hallows, a small amount of money, and his spells. If this fails, there is a small chance Harry will be stuck in this useless dead future, and an even bigger chance he will be torn to shreds by the sheer force of the magic he will have to pour into this spell. If it works, Harry will be able to start anew, change the future without fear of a paradox. Harry will be harnessing all the magic in the world, all that is left, in the hopes that this foolish plan of his will work, and he has no clue how far back he might go.

Five years, he could change the end of the war. Voldemort was insane, but he was brilliant. Harry knows five years would not be nearly enough, but he knows that their chances are better with Tom Riddle on their side. Ten years, to his own young life. He could save Sirius from death and resurrect the dark lord himself. He could use his gifts to pull the soul pieces from his individual horcruxes and reform his soul. Twenty, he could raise his younger self, save him from the pain of the Dursley's and the ignorance of growing up with Muggles. Thirty years, he could prevent Voldemort from hearing of the prophecy. He could save his parents. Thirty years in the past, and he will have plenty of time to prevent the muggles from learning of magic, plenty of time to save Voldemort, to save everyone. If he goes back far enough he could save Tom Riddle too, raise him or grow up beside him. The possibilities of going back that far, having that much time, are endless and invigorating.

Still, Harry only expects to go back five. Five is all he needs to prevent the magical plague and the apocalypse. Sure, he'd like thirty, he'd like as much time as possible to befriend Voldemort, to save as many lives as possible, to make his new identity as unfailable as possible. He'd like enough time to go to school in the same years as Tom Riddle, or his parents, to make his new identity a real identity and not just a name easily proven false. He wants enough time to do everything he has ever desired to do since he learned of the time turner in his third year, but he knows he can't expect anything.

Harry shakes himself off. He can't sit here dwelling on maybes and what-ifs. He is running out of time. Harry raises the elder wand and repairs the time turner with a wordless spell. It is smaller than Hermione's had been, silver rather than gold, and the golden sand inside shimmers pink. He takes one more hopeful look around, taking in every detail of his runic spell circle. A part of him wishes he had more time, time to test, but he does not. Harry waves his wand to power the rune circle, and he can feel it pulling in magic as the black ink of the drawing begins to glow amethyst purple. It is agonizing, the sheer force and power of all the magic in the world in his veins. It isn't much, all things considered, the magical equivalent of ten fully grown adults with above average magical cores, but it is more than his body can handle. He can already feel it tearing him apart, even with the potions he took to boost his abilities to hold such magic. He knows he must act quickly. He turns the knob on the side of the time turner, chanting the spell the coven had come up with as he does.

"Magic dies at world's end, time to go back to where it begins. Bring me back to the start, my intentions are pure of heart. Guide me now through the unraveling of time, to a time when magic thrived." He repeats it in Latin, then French, and then returns back to the beginning as he turns the knob as quickly as he can. He loses track of turns pretty quickly, but he twists and twists until the knob will no longer move, no matter how much force he puts behind it. He finishes the last few words of the chant, then he lets go. 

The world spins sickeningly, and the agony of the magic inside him increases so much it is unbearable. He can feel the magic both growing and shrinking all at the same time, tearing him apart at the seams.

he world fades away into pitch black darkness with rapid streams of silver shimmering smoke like genie smoke. The pain grows and grows into the most unbearable agony he has ever experienced. Then there is nothing. No darkness, no light, no pain, no comfort. Complete and utter nothingness. Non existence. It feels like a second, and a millenia all at once, then everything returns to him in a swirling vortex of loud sounds and bright colors, blurry and distorted as if he were underwater. A silver portal opens and Harry falls through it like alice through the rabbit hole, crashing to the ground painfully. The world stops and a rush of dizziness comes over him, rocking him backwards as his vision fades out into blackness.

\--

When Harry wakes it is still just as dark as it was when he fell from the time portal. He struggles to stand up through the aches in his bones and the throbbing pain in his head, but once he gets his bearings he realizes he recognizes where he is. It is the graveyard Voldemort was resurrected in, the graveyard by the Riddle Manor. If he's lucky, really lucky, the accursed place is empty. He casts a quick cleaning spell on himself. The charm is a third-year spell, and it drains him. He is weakened by his journey to whatever time this is. Still, he needs to know when he is, so he casts a tempus charm. The charm sends him to his knees, panting with magical exhaustion, but the magical green clock and calendar show up telling him the exact date and time.

August o4, 1973, 00:56 am.

Harry grins. When he'd left it had been February 15, 2003. He's traveled back 30 years like he was wishing. Harry calculates the dates in his head. His next birthday will fall a bit over five months from the current date, meaning he turns twenty-three on January 20th, though his birthday will likely be decided by his fake parents. He rustles through his messenger bag for the folder with the enchanted papers. Inside he finds his old birth certificate and the blank charmed one. He still needs to find a new name for himself and to take the de-aging potion before he activates the charms on the papers. Once he does this, there will be no turning back. He needs to find some people he can claim them as his parents. A graveyard is a perfect place for that. He can steal blood, or bones, and add it to the potion he plans to use to both claim them and change his appearance. After all, he can't go around looking like the son of James Potter and Lily Evans, especially if he plans to be going to school at the same time, or roughly the same time as them so his new identity is not suspicious.

Harry wanders around, passing graves with his fingers brushing gently against the tombstones. When he passes one, his fingers tingle, and he stops. The tombstone on it reads Cassiopeia Isolde Black. September 05, 1926 - January 20, 1970.  Died in childbirth at fifty-four years old. There is another name under hers. Malachi Lycoris Black. It only has one date, January 20, 1970. Stillborn. Harry shivers. He feels kind of sick at the thought of unburying a stillborn infant to take his identity, but at the same time, it is a perfect gift, one he can not pass up just because he is squeamish.

Harry grabs the shovel he'd found earlier and starts to dig until his arms aches mercilessly and the shovel hits the coffin. He uses the shovel to beat in the wooden roof inward and pulls the wood back until the corpses are revealed, remarkably preserved, but he supposes it makes sense given they are magic, though it does make him wonder why there are a couple Black's buried in a muggle cemetery. It's likely his soon to be mother was disowned for some reason. Harry feels absolutely disgusting as he pulls the newborn corpse away from his mother, but he knows he must. Harry wraps the infant in his robes and makes his way towards the Riddle manor.

The gardener is still there, the one Voldemort would kill in his dreams before his fourth year, and Harry banishes him with a wave of the elder wand. He almost blacks out when he does it, but it was either banishment or murder, and he doubts he could have gone through the murder if he did it the muggle way, and if a simple banishment almost put him on his knees, he suspects the killing curse would have killed him as well. Safe in the manor, Harry starts pulling his papers and potions from the messenger bag he brought with him. He eyes the potions he needs to treat his magical exhaustion, but he sets them aside knowing he can not take them until after he has completed the identity change.

Harry pulls out a collapsible cauldron and sets it up. He needs no fire, he simply needs a way to incorporate the potion and the baby together so he can steal its identity. The very idea is revolting. He unwraps the infant and puts it into the cauldron as gently as he is able. He pours the muddy brown potion over it, and watches as it changes, purple, blood red, to finally settling. The potion inside is an opaque, shimmery, pale rose petal pink liquid, as thick and warm as blood. It almost looks like bottled genie smoke, and it smells pleasantly sweet and floral like vanilla. Harry still doesn't want to drink it, knowing what ingredients it holds, but he does.

The fire that sets in his blood and bones makes the agony of magic ripping him apart piece by piece earlier seem gentle. When the fire stops, he doesn't even bother to look at himself, unable to conjure a mirror just yet. He simply reaches over and grabs the pain dampening potions and magical exhaustion potions, drinking all seven potions in quick succession. The pains wash away in a gentle buzz, and he feels his magic recharging, snapping back into place in his core instead of running wild like it had been. Now he tests it, conjuring a mirror, and he feels no pain and no other adverse side effects of having his magic restored. In fact, he feels stronger than ever.

The reflection in the conjured mirror is a stranger, but he can see some of himself still if he concentrates hard enough. His eyes are no longer peridot bright, but dark deep bluish green like pine. They stand out vividly against the pale porcelain of his skin, more so than the eerie killing curse eyes he'd had before. He has freckles, a star map of dark-brown dots standing starkly against the pale of his skin. His hair is a different shade of black, no longer the warm brownish licorice black of James Potter's hair, but a cool, deep, blueish ink black like Sirius had. It is no longer a curly riotous mess, instead it is straight, longish, and neatly styled. He stands about a half foot taller, just as slim and fit as he'd been as Harry, and his face is sharper, thinner, and more angular. He looks foxish with his big eyes, slim nose, and his sharp high cheekbones, almost but not quite too sharp. He looks like a Black should, but there is a wildness to him that he can't place. His scar is open, bleeding, and much larger now, the result of all the magic he poured into himself. Where once it was a small lightning bolt, the scar travels in long jagged lines down the entire left side of his face. It still looks just like lightning, but wilder. Harry knows this cut is just as cursed as the last one had been, and he has no doubt it will never fade, just like his horcrux scar had never faded. It will always look new. He had hoped the potion would lessen the scar though, not lengthen it.

He grabs the de-aging potion, the last potion he needs. He may be Malachi Black in all magical ways, but his age is still the same as it had been as Harry. As soon as he takes this potion and activates the charms on the papers, Harry Potter will die, and Malachi Black will live on in his stead. There will be no turning back. No Magic will ever reveal his old identity, and no magic will ever allow him to be Harry again.

"Harry James Potter is dead." He says to the empty ballroom. "Long live Malachi Lycoris Black."

He tips the potion back and he can see in the mirror as his features become younger and he shirks, until he is standing there, a two and a half year old toddler with the mind of an almost twenty three year old man. He grabs his papers and activates the charms, watching in fascination as the magic works to fill out all the information he needs, down to the last note. The papers erupt in blue flames, vanishing, just as he intended them to. He has no doubts of Hermione's spell work, he knows his records are now safe wherever the Ministry keeps them. He vanishes the supplies, the mirror, and packs everything he still has back into his messenger bag.

Exhausted, Malachi crawls into an armchair and settles down for a nap. A few hours couldn't hurt.

 


End file.
